


Conversations with the Past

by Vintage_Romantic



Category: Call the Midwife
Genre: F/F, Headcanon, and likes chess, basically a character analysis of Patsy's father, in which he is secretly a sappy romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-30
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-10-12 22:24:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10500666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vintage_Romantic/pseuds/Vintage_Romantic
Summary: A snapshot of Patsy's time with her father in Hong Kong and an unexpected gift.





	1. An Unspoken Truce

**Author's Note:**

> Dusting off my fiction skills.  
> I have always been intrigued by Patsy's father, who he was and what their reunion would have been like.  
> Thoughts? Comments? Questions? Critiques? All welcome here!
> 
> Enjoy ^.^
> 
> Shout out to Think_Busby_Think for the wonderful edits <3

The weather had finally turned pleasant over the last few months in Hong Kong. Patsy had forgotten how unforgiving the monsoon rains and humidity could be and was thankful for the extra bottle of lacquer she packed away for emergencies. Not that it had been put to much use since her father took a turn for the worse. Patsy hadn’t ventured beyond her father’s home much since the beginning of October, preferring to spend most of her time by her father’s bedside in case he required any attention. 

It had been awkward at first. Patsy hadn’t seen her father in over a decade, choosing to maintain contact via irregular letters updating him on her training and move into midwifery. The thought of visiting a place that held so many bittersweet memories terrified her and the only time she seriously considered it was when she thought she had lost Delia forever. In fact, Patsy had written to her father more regularly in those six months than any other time. They had very slowly and cautiously begun to rebuild their relationship through those letters but unfortunately her father had not let on that his health was beginning to fail. Perhaps he was in denial or too proud to admit his body was failing him. Jonathan Mount was always a proud man and had tried to keep his distance from his only living child in the wake of the war’s trauma.

John Mount was a naval man at heart. His desire for routine, order, and respect had been instilled in him from an early age. Growing up as the sole male heir in the Mount family, John knew he was due to inherit not only a vast fortune but, more importantly, leadership over his father’s shipbroking empire. He studied at the finest naval academy and served His Majesty’s Navy during the Great War before taking over the helm of his father’s company at the young age of 24. 

He had once lived to be on the sea, but after the horrors of the Second World War he tended to handle his business from the safety of solid land, relocating his post from Shanghai to Hong Kong. The distance could only heal so much though. John struggled in the wake of losing his darling wife, Elizabeth, and youngest daughter, Margaret. Somehow knowing that Patience had survived only made the loss more tangible. She had always looked so much like her mother. Even in her desperate state after being released from Lunghua John could only see his wife in her clear blue eyes. 

He preferred to tell himself that he sent Patience away after the war for her own good. But he knew the real reason was that he couldn’t bear to watch her grow into the spitting image of his Elizabeth. His heart could only take so much. Years later he regretted his decision. The distance between Hong Kong and England had made them practically strangers. Two people who shared the same blood but whose only correspondence was warm, if not strained, twice-yearly letters for Christmas and birthdays. By the time he fell ill the thing John regretted the most was never knowing the woman his daughter had become. So, he called for her. Hoping that nearly two decades of distance could be bridged while he still had time. 

Over the past few months he was determined to use what was left of his energy to rebuild a relationship with Patsy, his only surviving daughter and heir. During the first few months he was still well enough to sit up and be aided into his wheelchair so he and Patsy spent their days strolling the numerous hallways and sharing tea in gardens of the Mount family mansion, slowly becoming reacquainted with each other. However, John quickly realised that it would not be as simple a task as he had foolishly hoped.

Patience certainly took after his Elizabeth in both poise and beauty, but John was surprised to find that despite the distance, Patience’s outward demeanour nearly mirrored his own: aloof, stiff, and emotionally distant. 

After a fortnight of strained conversations over shared meals, John finally broached the topic of Patsy’s chosen profession. When John found out that his daughter wanted to pursue a career in nursing after prep school he was unsure at first. It wasn’t like women of Patsy’s status to hold what was considered a lower class occupation – in fact it wasn’t like women of Patsy’s standing to do much work at all outside of charitable foundations. But, he rationalized, times were changing. And it wasn’t as if she could eventually take over his company.

Other than alerting her father of her decision, Patsy had only asked if he could cover the base tuition fees. It wasn’t an enormous fee, especially considering the vast fortune John had amassed as he expanded his father’s company. So every term Patsy found her courses and lodgings paid in full. And maybe it was his buried guilt for missing out on her formative years but John always left an extra hundred pounds in the bank for Patsy, in case of an emergency. 

Patsy had held the belief that her father looked down his nose at her profession; that is was too lowly for someone with the Mount name. But here he was expressing interest in her career, her new life. Patsy cautiously responded to each of his enquiries, glancing up every so often only to be taken back by the genuine pride she saw reflected in her father’s grey eyes as she described how she made it through nursing college and decided to pursue midwifery. 

After that day the two surviving Mounts had come to an unspoken truce. They both silently agreed to begin to break down the walls they had built to protect their hearts. 

As days turned to weeks and weeks to months, John slowly learned more and more about Patsy and the new life she had built for herself in Poplar. It took a while for Patsy to reveal anything too personal to him, opting instead for stories about other’s hijinks at the Nurse’s Home or Sister Monica Joan and her clever cake stealing ways. But as the seasons changed Patsy began to open up about her new found friends, about her late night gatherings with Trixie and Barbara, even recalling the time when they had accidentally got Babs drunk the night before her first shift. 

John loved to hear these stories and was learning more about his daughter daily but he had a feeling Patsy was leaving something important, or rather someone important, out of her tales. Her retellings felt edited, censored in some way. As a naval Captain, John was known to his crew as “the interrogator.” Feared for his ability to root out the truth from his officers who were concealing contraband or telling half-truths about their activities while on leave. Not wanted to resort to those tactics lest he scare Patsy away, John opted instead for asking more pointed questions, about Patsy’s hobbies, friends, and interests aside from work. 

John quickly discovered a suspicious lack of men in Patience’s life. Apart from Dr. Turner and this odd Tom character, the only men Patsy spoke of were the husbands of the women she assisted through labour. Had the war not abruptly changed their lives John would have expected Patsy to be married by now. Elizabeth would have insisted on it being a perfect match of course. Someone of the right social standing but more importantly someone who cared for Patience as John had once cared for his Elizabeth. Because, despite his naval training and cool exterior, John Mount was a romantic at heart. He had spent months wooing a young Elizabeth having been introduced at an officer’s ball in 1926 before she finally agreed to marry the lovesick fool. 

However, the war had happened. It changed the course of both their lives. Despite the fact that men of his social standing were expected to find new wives and start new families John simply couldn’t bear the idea of marrying again. It felt too much like a betrayal to the love he still felt for his late wife. So, John thought, if he couldn’t bring himself to meet this standard it did not feel just to hold these same expectations over Patsy. They had both been heartbroken hadn’t they? Perhaps the most he could hope for Patsy was that nursing would help fill the void left by not having a husband. 

But just as John was beginning to accept the idea that Patsy had decided live a solitary life, a work focused life as he had, a new character entered his daughter’s stories, Delia.


	2. The Welsh Woman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John learns about Delia and Patsy receives a surprising gift from her past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 2! 
> 
> Thanks again to Think_Busby_Think for the wonderful edits and suggestions!  
> I hope you enjoy ^.^ Comments and critiques are always welcome.

            Delia began cropping up more frequently in Patsy’s tales. Often, they would just be off hand comments: “then Delia piped up ‘Penis, it’s called a penis ladies, if we’re going to be nurses we may as well get used to saying the proper words’ ” or “We had all gone to the cinema but couldn’t decide on a film, of course Delia wanted to see some art house piece.” These snippets weren’t enough for John to draw a full picture of the young woman but they were enough to know she was a constant in his daughter's life and had certainly left an impression on Patsy.

 

At first John hadn’t thought to ask more about her, merely filing her among the small group of nurses Patsy shared her work with. After a particularly rough night when Patsy had been up at all hours administering water and painkillers however, he began to reconsider.

Exhaustion had finally set in for Patsy and she lightly dozed while upright on her perch beside his bed. John lay awake, thinking of just how little time he had left with his daughter, when he heard her begin to murmur. She used to do this as a child. He smiled, remembering how Elizabeth thought it was the most endearing thing. John strained to hear what Patsy was sighing…

 

            “Delia… Deels…you know I don’t dance… Delia…”

 

John stilled. Delia. There she was again.

 

This wasn’t like the other times Patsy had mentioned her.

 

John hadn’t heard this tone before, at least not from Patsy.

 

Suddenly, as if guided by his daughter’s murmurs, John wasn’t the 65-year-old fading business tycoon. He was again the 27 year-old, lovesick fool, terrified of his two left feet.

~

**_Elizabeth… You know I don’t dance… Elizabeth!_ **

_Oh come on you, I know you must have learned to dance at that fancy school of yours… I mean really Jonathan. How are you going to face our first dance as husband and wife when you can’t even dance with me when no one is watching?_

~

 

He swore in that moment he could hear her delicate laugh, cutting through the years and thick August air.

 

No. The last time he had heard that tone, that affection, was when he called for his long gone wife.

 

John didn’t sleep that night, swirling between memories and the present as he confronted what it would mean if Patience, his only daughter, was enamoured– if not in love – with this… _Delia._

~

            Days later when he was well enough to be propped up on his four-poster bed he chanced a question.

           

            “Patience, was Delia a fellow nurse with you at The London or is she one of the nuns at Nonnatus?” John asked, knowing full well Delia wasn’t a nun but he wanting to gauge Patsy’s reaction.

 

            Glancing up from the chess game they had laid out to pass the time during what was shaping up to be a particularly heavy monsoon season he caught a flash of surprise, and perhaps fear, in Patsy’s eyes before she quickly looked down as if to consider her next move.

 

“Oh, um yes. Delia and I trained together and she… she lodges with me… with us at Nonnatus. She is certainly not a nun,” Patsy replied with a mixture of restraint and humour at the suggestion that Delia could be considered a nun.

 

Her reaction didn’t confirm John’s suspicions, though she clearly meant more to Patience than she had initially let on. He had wanted to ask more but could tell Patsy had closed herself off to the topic as she quickly moved to continue the game.

 

After that chess game, John noticed that Delia featured more regularly in his daughter’s stories. It was as if Patsy was slowly and cautiously introducing him to the spunky nurse, whom he had learned was Welsh, had a flare for adventure, and was reasonably well cultured for someone from the countryside.

            He didn’t pretend to fully understand this side of his daughter and in truth he decided he didn’t care. Out at sea he had seen not only violence and destruction, but the love some sailors shared with one another. Men whose bonds went beyond mere camaraderie. He had turned a blind-eye to them because all he knew was that those men, so devoted to each other they would lie down their lives for the other were nothing but the most dedicated soldiers. As long as they kept their business private and maintained the upmost discretion while in the company of others, what they did behind closed doors was beyond his concern.

 

            So he made a point of asking simple questions here and there, wanting to gain more insight into who this Delia was, if she at least knew and whether she was truly worthy of his daughter, whether she was someone who could be trusted to protect Patsy’s honour.

 

Perhaps it was the light that glowed in her eyes whenever she even mentioned her name, or the stories she told with a hint of pride of Delia fighting for the privacy and comfort of her patients or maybe it was just a father’s intuition but by early autumn, despite their initial distance and his rapidly declining health, John knew that Patience was going to be left in capable hands.

 

One morning while Patsy was out on a rare errand to the chemist, John had his maid retrieve Elizabeth’s long unopened jewellery box from his roll-top desk. In it was the small diamond and sapphire engagement ring he had given to Elizabeth and had managed to save during the war.

 

From Patsy’s absentminded murmurs he had learned her Delia had bright blue eyes that bore a striking similarity to the middle-set stone in Elizabeth’s ring. John knew that his daughter could never completely live her life in the open. Precautions needed to be taken, affections hidden, lies told, but he hoped that Patsy would understand this gesture. That she would understand that he saw her, all of her.

 

He didn’t have to imagine at how hard these past months had been for her – to be away from Delia for this long and to care for him as he prepared to leave this world. He only hoped for her sake he did not linger long now, a gentleman always knew when to take his leave.

 

The box sat in his bedside table for days as his health deteriorated quickly. It was a blessing and curse that the disease that coursed through his body had yet to affect his mind. He was still able to find comfort in hearing Patsy’s voice and stories. It wasn’t until he felt the last of his mental strength begin to slip away that he broached the subject.

 

Patsy was sitting beside him in his darkened room – he found that anything more than candlelight hurt his eyes now – recounting one of the more complicated births she had assisted with, when he reached over, placing his frail hand over hers. “Patsy,” he gasped through tight breaths, “Patsy stop for just one moment please?”

 

“What is it? Do you need more water?” Patsy replied, moving up from her bedside vigil.

 

“No, no dear I’m quite alright, I only wanted to stop you while I still had the energy. I have something for you,” John offered.

 

“Oh you didn’t have to do that father,” said Patsy, hesitant to receive what felt ominously like the last gift she would get from her father.

 

“I did Patience. Now listen to your father and reach into my bedside table,” he instructed Patsy.

 

As Patsy gently lifted her mother’s jewellery box from the drawer she drew in a silent gasp. She was flooded at once with memories of watching her mother open the very same box as she dressed up for opulent balls. Patsy’s hands shook as she placed the pearl-accented box on her father’s bed. “Father, I couldn’t… I couldn’t possibly…” Patsy mumbled, seemingly in awe of seeing this fixture of her childhood and her mother again.

 

“Shh Patience of course you can. This box and what’s inside is rightfully yours. Elizabeth – your mother – would have wanted it this way. Now open it, I am not getting any younger.” John rasped a laugh that sounded more like a cough as he tried to lighten the heavy mood that settled over the room.

 

As Patsy opened it she could hardly contain yet another gasp. There, resting on the aged silk lining, alongside her father’s naval tags was her mother’s engagement ring; the ring Patsy had always marvelled at. She remembered begging her mother to tell her their engagement story time and again until Patsy could recite it from memory.

 

Her father had made a fool of himself attempting to cook Elizabeth a romantic meal, but being an aristocratic young man who hadn’t so much as picked up a pot or turned on a stove, he had failed spectacularly. In the wreckage of his perfectly good kitchen, John, still covered in flour, had got down on one knee to ask Elizabeth for her hand. Patsy remembered loving the story as a child because it always made her laugh to think of her strict, serious father being a romantic oaf.

 

Patsy was so distracted by the wave of memories that she almost didn’t hear her father clear his throat. “I am sorry father, what was that?” Patsy asked, finally looking up from the ring and her memories.

 

“I said I want you to have this Patience,” John replied quietly.

 

“But father… I couldn’t possibly. I mean, at least, it's absolutely beautiful… but remember mother’s hands were the slightest things,” Patsy blushed as she turned over her own calloused hands, “I’m afraid I couldn’t wear this even if I tried.”

 

“That’s quite alright Patience, I left my naval chain there. It can be worn that way?” John suggested. “Or if it is too much a painful memory, you could give it to away, to someone dear?” He added, attempting to meet his daughter’s eye.

 

“What?” Patsy quickly questioned, looking at father in surprise.

 

“Perhaps to that Delia girl of yours. You speak of her so fondly, she seems to me to be someone who can be trusted to take care of it for you.” John spoke of course in double meaning, wanting to show his support and approval without frightening Patsy to close herself off.

 _My Delia?_ Patsy’s mind raced as she tried to figure out what this all meant. _Was it something I said? Did I tell one too many stories of our adventures during training? Did I let on too much in recounting her accident? Wait… did he just suggest I give this to Delia, but its mother’s_ engagement _ring, that must mean…_

 

John watched as waves of emotions passed over his daughter’s face, from shock and fear to unsettled apprehension. He waited a moment before drawing her out of her thoughts. “Patience, getting to know you again has been a blessing. You have become a truly beautiful woman and from the sounds of it a capable nurse. I trust you will follow that strong-willed head of yours and find a suitable, _loving,_ home for this gift and your heart.”

 

Patsy’s eyes filled with tears as she grasped his meaning. He knew. He knew about Delia and more shocking, he accepted it. She knew that this conversation was the closest she would get to a blessing from her father and she was nearly cracked at the thought. Stealing herself behind her well-practiced façade, Patsy finally met her father’s gaze.

 

“Thank you… thank you father. I’ll be sure this lives in good hands,” she said cradling the ring against her rapidly beating heart.

 

“Patience. Patsy, you have made me proud. Never forget that.” John gasped out before a violent coughing fit overtook him. Patsy quickly brought his water up to his mouth, wetting his dry, chapped lips.

 

“Shh, shh, rest father just rest.” Patsy urged.

 

Wiping the tears that had escaped her eyes Patsy looked over her frail father, in awe at what had transpired and resolved that her mother’s ring find its home with Delia. After all the sapphire was perfect match for the pair of brilliant blues she was so desperately missing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm thinking about continuing this and expanding on some other headcanons I have for this lovely couple. Pop over to my tumblr (@awkwardly-romantic) if you'd like to see the picture of ring I used as a model, its a beautiful piece from the 1920s.


End file.
